I think bash is terse for at least 2 reasons:

1. Quicker to type repeated variations of commands at a CLI.

2. Memorization of flags isn't as much a concern since you're at the CLI, you can often easily look up the meanings of options and flags with -h or man pages.

It may be slightly more difficult in the beginning, but once you're familiar, terseness saves significant time.

I would relate shell languages more to vim or emacs in that regards. They have a higher learning curve but pay off in efficiency in the long term.